GREAT BARRINGTON, Mass. — The town celebrated the unveiling of the W.E.B Du Bois monument at Mason Library on Saturday with speakers, singers, dancers and ice cream. 

 

The bronze sculpture, created by artist Richard Blake, sits on a curving marble bench with hand outstretched and open, welcoming passers-by to stop. 

 

"Du Bois meets us not with a sword ... not with a fist, not with a flag. He meets us with an open hand," said Imari Paris Jeffries, president and CEO of Embrace Boston, a partner in the sculpture project. "An open hand is never just a hand. It is a symbol, a language, a refusal. It is peace, the kind does not that does not forget violence, but refuses to replicate it. It is a welcome. It is a gesture that says you belong here, even in a nation that tried to make you feel otherwise."

 

Contrast that, he said, with 2,000 monuments, schools, roads, lakes, rivers and military bases named for Confederate leaders "planted after Reconstruction in the hard soil of Jim Crow and then the aftermath of Brown v. Board [of Education]. They were constructed not to grieve the dead, but to police the living."

 

The life-size statue of the civil rights leader, author, and sociologist offers something far different, Paris Jeffries said: "It is an offering of memory and of intellect, of unyielding belief that Black life contains multitudes, a monument to love."

 

The sculpture now joins that in Sheffield of Elizabeth Freeman, whose suit for freedom lead to the abolition of slavery in Massachusetts, in marking local Black history. 

 

Its creation was years in the making through the efforts of a broad coalition of local and state partners. Julie Michaels, co-chair of the sculpture project, ticked off all the people and organizations who when asked to make the project a reality said, "Nobody said no, nobody said next week, nobody said tomorrow. They all said, 'yes, yes, yes.' And that is so important to us."